Brad Renfro

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Here's another entry to the all-star multi-strand Los Angeles ensemble drama genre (see Short Cuts, Magnolia, Crash, Southland Tales). But while this one features strong acting and stylish filmmaking, it's emotionally empty.

In 1983 L.A., studio exec William (Thornton) wants to reconcile with his heavily medicated wife Laura (Basinger) while continuing to see his self-doubting TV newscaster mistress (Ryder). Their son Graham (Foster) is indulging in drugs and sex with his girlfriend (Heard) and best pal (Nichols), who's also sleeping with Laura for cash. Meanwhile, Graham's doorman (Renfro) is trying to please his criminal father figure (Rourke), but Graham's friend Tim (Pucci) has no interest in connecting with his dad (Isaak).

The drug-addled zombies lurching through Gregor Jordan's The Informers are relics, dinosaurs from a decadent decade who belong in a museum, not a movie theater. Their destructively self-absorbed attitudes might have shocked audiences in 1983, the year the picture is set. Since then, however, we've spent too much time in the dead zones of Melrose Place, The O.C., and The Hills to be shaken by southern California's over-privileged fraternity.

Like a soap opera, Informers introduces multiple characters and touches on their issues. The nicest ones are stoners, voyeurs, and adulterers. On the flip side, we get kidnappers, drug dealers, and pedophiles.

It may be a bit of an acquired taste, but Happy Campers (from Heathers writer Daniel Waters), but the film definitely deserved a better fate than being dumped on home video. Nonetheless it's worth a spin if you happen to come across it: It's the usual hijinks at Camp Bleeding Dove, with horny counselors running amok when camp leader (Peter Stormare) is incapacitated and a hurricane strikes the grounds. Dominique Swain steals the show as a Jan Brady-like innocent who wants to entertain her young charges and keep them pristine, but also pines for Wichita (Brad Renfro) all the same. The film gets a little muddy as the movie gets weirder, suffering from the same problems that made Wet Hot American Summer a curious oddity instead of a cult classic. Characters make abrupt personality shifts, and the in-joke just goes a bit too far. Funny? Yes. Another Heathers? Not quite.

Larry Clark -- who wrote and directed his first film, Kids, at the tender age of 52 and in the process, broke the mold about what we should expect from a movie about teenagers -- returns to familiar ground in Bully, a striking and harrowing follow-up.

A slam-dunk natural subject for Clark, Bully follows the based-on-reality story of Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro), who along with his girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) decides to brutally slay his "best friend" Bobby (Nick Stahl) as payback for a lifetime of abuse. Set in the ultra-trashy nether regions of southern Florida -- and I mean seriously, beyond-WWF trashy -- there's little to do but drive your car, play video games, have sex, and beat the crap out of your friends.

This '60s slice of life story comes from the unlikely pen of Joe Eszterhas, best known for neo-porn like Basic Instinct. Renfro plays Eszterhas's obvious alter-ego, an immigrant kid that's unpopular at school and has iffy luck with the ladies. He falls in with a corrupt radio DJ (Kevin Bacon) while tentatively wooing a pre-fame Calista Flockhart. The story hangs together loosely, bouyed by strong performances from the three leads.

I have been searching for a delicate way to put this, but nothing has come to mind, so here goes: This movie is seriously screwed up.

Skipped Parts, based on a purportedly much-loved book that I've never heard of, tells the unlikely story of a 15-year-old boy (Bug Hall) in the early 1960s, whose trashy mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh, a fright in platinum blonde) encourages him to do whatever he wants. Namely, that involves experimenting with sex, and our buddy Bug does so, frequently, with the local cheerleader (Mischa Barton, the scariest looking young actress in film today, next to Gaby Hoffman). Meanwhile, mom sluts it up with a friendly Indian while the prepubescent teen becomes pregnant during all this boning.

How on earth did Kevin Bacon get top billing in a cast that includes Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, and Jason Patric -- just for starters? That's just one of the disturbing aspects of Sleepers (and I don't mean that in a bad way), Barry Levinson's new drama/thriller that finally redeems him for the idiocy of Disclosure and Toys.

Based on the extremely controversial novel, Sleepers tells what is purported to be a true story of revenge in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. Four early-teenaged friends (played as adults by Patric, Pitt, Ron Eldard, and Billy Crudup -- who I have to mention just because I like to say "Crudup") are sent to a juvenile center when a prank goes wrong and almost kills a bystander. The brutality that occurs in the center does not need to be expounded upon, but suffice it's very horrible, and that guard Sean Nokes (Bacon) is the baddest of the bad guys.

It's been seven years since director Terry Zwigoff impressed moviegoers with his documentary Crumb, an uncomfortable look at pop comic artist R. Crumb and his disturbing, grotesque, dysfunctional family. Zwigoff's ability to make viewers squirm and laugh at the same time is again in full bloom, with the fictional Ghost World, a funny, sympathetic look at a whole new group of awkward, unhappy people.

Based on a comic/graphic novel by Daniel Clowes (who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with Zwigoff), Ghost World provides the point-of-view of young Enid, just out of high school, and aimless in both direction and identity. In the able hands of Thora Birch, who's already suffered the ennui of suburbia in American Beauty, Enid is a caustic, sarcastic, yet charming, sweetie. Birch is in practically every scene of the film, and anchors it with perfect tone.

Not only does the provocative title of Tart mislead us, but the packaging features a lithe Dominique Swain on its covers, her schoolgirl skirt blowing up to expose her panties. The tagline: "Sex, Drugs and Study Hall."

But as infamous as "Kids" was for its grossly candid depiction of drug use and careless, even vengeful sex, it was largely fictional. "Bully" isn't quite as coarse, but may be more chilling as it is based on true events: The circumstances surrounding the very premeditated but very sloppy slaying of a malevolent south Florida delinquent who physically intimidated and verbally abused his friends until, well, they killed him.

Fascinating in a "Cops"-meets-Psychology Today, can't-help-but-look kind of way, every character in this film is a vile imbecile -- the kind of nitwits who genuinely look to angry white rapper Eminem as a role model.